Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/21/22: Crypto Billionaires, JD Vance, Media vs Jon Stewart, DC Corruption, Sen. Feinstein's Decline, & Chomsky Smears!

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Due to extraordinary circumstances, there is not the typical Thursday show out today or the premium newsletter for it. Instead we have put segments together for a Thursday mini show! In the show, Krystal and Saagar talk about the Crypto billionaires becoming political players, media attacks on Jon Stewart, Trump endorsing JD Vance in Ohio, a Congressman revealing DC corruption, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's mental decline, and Kyle Kulinski the attacks towards Noam Chomsky!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. All right, folks, you've asked for it, and we have brought back a great longtime friend of the show, DC Bureau Chief for The Intercept, the one and only Ryan Grimm. Very excited to be here. We missed you, man. Yeah, we have missed you.

Missed you guys, too. Yeah, so Ryan, of course, has been over at Rising. The show is taped at the same time. So finally now we have an opportunity to bring him back into our little world here as well. So let's start with some of your latest reporting. Let's go ahead and throw this up on the screen. CryptoPAC throws in $1 million to back Ohio Representative Chantel Brown over Nina Turner. Progressives are confronting a new obstacle as big spending from the crypto industry reshapes the electoral calculus.

So, Ryan, there's a couple pieces of this that are really important. First of all, there's the piece of the amount of money that is flooding into this race of Chant there's also a bigger story about crypto asserting itself in DC and becoming a sort of top influence peddler in a very short period of time. Right. Right. The Chantel Brown piece is interesting and it's a high profile race because it's got that establishment progressive wing feel to it. But the piece is more broadly about this kind of new player on the field, which is crypto. And what they've been able to do, because they have so much kind of disposable crypto cash, that they can target individual races and come in with huge amounts of money. Like I wrote about how they've already dropped $6 million and counting in this one sleepy Oregon Democratic primary. And what's the reason for that?

Well, I mean, I think basically the reason is to elect this guy, Carrick Flynn, who worked for Sam Bankman Freed's brother. And he grew up in Oregon and has spent like 10 years abroad, worked as a lobbyist and a researcher in DC. And then he moved back in the summer of 2020. And now this crypto pack is throwing millions of dollars behind him to elect him. Tell people who Sam Begman-Fried is. He's this really fascinating kind of eccentric like philosopher guy, right? He's 30 years old. Forbes puts his wealth at like $24 billion. He was a trader who left the kind of world of dollar trading and currency trading and got into crypto.

And he built FTX, this gigantic crypto exchange. And so all of his money is tied up in crypto. And he is what they call an effective altruist. And so in his whole life, he's been like, he went into, he says he went into investment banking basically, went to Wall Street to make a lot of money so he could give it away. On this Peter Singer utilitarian, like, that's how you make the world. It's very big in Silicon Valley. Sam Altman is a big proponent of effective altruism. I think a lot of it is cringe. I mean, the basic idea, as far as I understand, you can tell me if I'm wrong about this,

is effectively these are people who are saying, like, we're going to crunch the numbers to figure out what is the greatest amount of good that we could do for the least amount of dollars. The reason I'm always scat, which I understand why someone would say, oh, that's great, and if I'm a genuine do-gooder, that might be a good approach. The reason I'm always skeptical of these things is you can't run a math formula to figure out your values.

So that's the part that seems to be a little bit lacking with the philosophy. Yeah, right. And in some ways it's trying to hack politics or trying to get around politics, trying to pretend like it's not a conflict over scarce resources. And then it raises the question, okay, if you're doing that, how does spending a million dollars on Chantel Brown fit into this idea? The greatest good for the greatest number of people. That's what I want to get at. Because, look, I'm pro-crypto. Everybody knows that here.

And I do think, you know, these crypto packs, I don't think necessarily speak for the crypto community. Part of the problem is when everybody gets fantastically wealthy, everybody starts just throwing cash around and be like, I'm the person who's spoken for crypto. That's a great point. And what I'm curious about on Chantel is like, what has she said in the past about crypto? Is she on the books as crypto or is there some pro crypto or is there some like backdoor stuff happening? I can't find much, but the way this tends to work is that these organizations, this is not just unique to crypto, but your pro-Israel group, Sunrise, but whenever they give surveys to candidates and then the candidate answers the survey. And if the survey comes back with the right answers, this is an A plus, here's six million.

Let me also say somewhat less diplomatically that Chantal Brown is someone who is more likely to be able to be bought than Nina Turner. Does she care one way or the other? Right. Is she committed to crypto or have some, like, fully developed worldview? No. So if a crypto pack comes in with a million dollars in her race, when it comes down the road and they want specific things to be regulated or not regulated, she's likely to just do what they want because she's kind of unformed. Right. And she got a couple million dollars from DMFI PAC, Democratic Majority for Israel,

during her last campaign. And she recently was one of only about 20 Democrats or so to sign this letter that was like a very hawkishly pro-Israel letter. So Shantel Brown all of a sudden is becoming like this very hawkishly pro-Israel candidate. But I think your point is really interesting about how they don't speak for the crypto community. Because Citizens United has allowed this unlimited spending in the race. So one person can come in and drop $6 million in this race. And it looks like they gave a million to House Majority Pack, which is a Democrat super PAC. And they dropped it on the race. So it's like double blind.

Well, so that was my next question to you. Crystal alluded to this during our show, which is that there has been pressure. Maybe you can expose some of this by Democratic leadership on the Progressive Caucus and others in order to explicitly endorse Chantel Brown and not to just stay out of the race with Nina Turner. Can you speak to that in any way? So we did, and we teamed up with the lever on this to do a bunch of reporting about how this process worked. And there's some people who felt like there was a thumb put on the scale and that they should have stayed out, just completely stayed out of it. Whereas others we talked to said that there were eight. So basically, Chantelle Brown joined the CPC immediately upon winning. She then signed on to Medicare for All, became a sponsor of that. Pearl Jai Paul thanked her publicly.

And so there is basically a process in place that if you're a member of the cpc the cpc pack endorses you it would be kind of strange if you didn't but there there still was a vote of eight uh there was a slate of like eight members who asked for the endorsement of the cpc pack and it just kind of went through there was there wasn't any kind of internal fight over it so the the real decision was you know who who who put her on that list rather than pulling it out and saying, you know what? This is actually a pretty big deal. Like this is not something that you should just go through pro forma. Well, and I mean the other thing is she's in the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

She's also in the New Democrat Caucus, which is like, you know, the two things don't make any, they completely, they shouldn't be banned. Join both of those. And so there's also a question of like, you know, Congressional Progressive Caucus will just let anybody in and doesn't have to actually stand with their values or share their ideology ultimately. You know, on the crypto PAC thing, I think this is so interesting because it's, I mean, it is just another like form of influence peddling. And my understanding isn't Sam Bankman Freed. His mother is also a big Democratic donor in California. Barbara Freed is my understanding. And so it also seems like another sort of big money interest group that is trying to influence the Democratic Party writ large, not just in these individual races.

Right. And if, let's say, there were 5 million people who own crypto and agree with Sagar and they follow Sagar relentless, this guy's right. Don't give people ideas. And they wanted to get together and each contribute. That's different. Like, okay, that's a grassroots effort

to like push forward something that like the public wants. And that's actually much more spirit in the spirit of crypto. It should, right. Having a unilateral billionaire who, you know, got lucky on a trade,

like let's all be honest here. Right. And then, you know. All of a sudden. I've seen this constantly. Guys who bought Bitcoin in 2011 now think they're like philosopher kings. And they have their money.

I mean, look, you made a good bet. That's great. It worked out fantastically for you. That doesn't mean that you know everything under God's earth. And a lot of them really get it to their heads. So I think it's interesting in those two concepts, Ryan, just around both power, how the crypto people are spending it. But really, I'm just the most curious on that House majority donation and whether that's linked to some other money, just simply because we know via Nancy Pelosi and some of these other Silicon Valley financier

connections via like a Reid Hoffman, who's, I understand, the biggest, I think the biggest Democratic donor. Probably. Maybe outside of George Soros. Yeah. Right. And so for people following along, so there's the Senate majority pack and the House majority pack. And those are the super packs basically run by Schumer and run by Pelosi. And all of a sudden this pack dropped a million dollars on this race where Bankman-Fried had already spent $6 million. And so all of the candidates collectively put out a statement saying like, where'd this money come from? Yeah, for House races. What was it offered? Because House majority pack isn't just out, it should be a safe district. I think there's a good chance they'll end up losing it because of

all of this weirdness. Because it's a terrible landscape for Democrats in general. Terrible landscape. And if it becomes clear that crypto like bought the nominee, then how's that going to play in the general election? Well, there's a funny detail in your story, too, about how there's another candidate in the race who decided, like, you know what? I'm going to get in. It's not just about the issues. You've got to have money. So I'm going to get into crypto.

I'm going to make a bunch of money. And then I'm going to run for Congress. A whole long game. Right. So this other crypto pack is sort of big footing, the actual crypto candidate. He spent two and a half million so far of his own money. Of his own money. Of crypto money. He had run four times before. He's got to be losing his mind. He had run as a progressive party candidate, 5%. Ran as a green party candidate, got 4%. Ran as an

independent party, which is hilarious. I love it when there's an independent party. Like, how can you be both? So he ran as that. He got like 3% for Senate. Then he ran a fourth time and dropped out. And then he said, I need to go get rich. And he got into crypto, made a bunch of money.

He's like, I'm going to buy this seat. And he's spending all of his crypto. I don't know how much crypto he has. He's spending a lot of crypto. And then, boom, Sam Bankman-Fried's like, you think you're rich? Here his crypto. I don't know how much crypto he has. He's spending a lot of crypto and then boom, Sam Bankman free, he's like, you think you're rich? Here we go. I got $24 billion.

Do you know what are their priorities? Like what do they actually want to get with this money? Sagar would actually know better, but basically I think they just don't want regulation and taxes. It depends, right? Which is that there's a lot going on in terms of like realized gains because this capital gains applies on that.

But as I get it, it's actually less to do with Congress and more with the executive branch because a lot of this comes under the Department of the Treasury. Federal Reserve wants to do its own stablecoin. And then there's also not disclosure requirements, but basically if they crack down on the way that – this is getting deep, so I'm sorry, but it comes into the context of like the actual mining itself and the types of way, if you write the law in a specific way, you will actually disincentivize mining, which is the backbone of the blockchain. And it would make it so that it moves outside US borders,

which is not really what you want. Because, I mean, look, you know, for all of the criticism and all that, the people who are mining Bitcoin in China or in Odessa in Ukraine were doing so with actually very dirty energy. So there's also an energy use perspective as a national security thing about where exactly blockchain mining and all that is held. So it gets pretty deep. But that's really, if you care a lot about it, where a lot of them- And that's where they want to be. They want to be- Right. There you go. Yeah. they want to sit at that table.

So I think the important thing is some of their priorities may align with yours. Some of them may not. And the fact that you have this big money flooding in is shaping our political system just like any other big money interest group. Ryan, thank you as always. Very interesting development in the Ohio Senate race. So President Donald Trump has gone and endorsed J.D. Vance in that. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Full disclosure here, as I've always promised you, anytime I know somebody, I am personal friends with J.D. Vance

and have been for a long time. So take my anything that I say with a grain of salt. Here is what the president said in his endorsement. MAGA patriots from across the nation are set to deliver an election landscape, blah, blah, blah, in the great state of Ohio. The candidate most qualified and ready to win in November is J.D. Vance. We cannot play games. It's all about winning. Like some others, J.D. may have said some not-so-great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I've seen that in spades. He is our best chance for victory in what could be a very tough race. The Democrats will be spending many millions of dollars. The good news is they have a defective candidate who ran for president and garnered 0% in the polls, blah, blah, blah. The bottom line is we must have a Republican victory in Ohio.

So some behind-the-scenes stuff. The battle for this endorsement has been incredible to watch. So there are multiple different candidates who are running, all of them claiming the MAGA mantle. Number one was Josh Mandel, who can best be described as a neocon swamp clown who is trying to paint himself as

MAGA. He was... It's cartoonish. It's unbelievable. We played on Rising in the past. He's like fake southern accent. It's incredible. But watching this guy pretend to be some big, bad warrior has just been really something to behold. Sadly, he was still always number one in the polls.

And I honestly, absent the endorsement, I thought he was going to win the primary. Number two has been this guy, Mike Gibbons, who was really kind of more of a dark horse candidate who came in and spent millions of dollars. Now, the thing to understand is that the Club for Growth here in Washington, D.C., which is a much more libertarian organization, really declared war on J.D. Vance and spent millions of dollars trying to destroy his candidacy. J.D., in my opinion, really only had one chance of victory, and it's exactly what just happened to him, was the Trump endorsement. Because I'm talking about millions spent on some of the past stuff that he had said about Trump. And look, I mean, for him, I mean, I think what

he said was reasonable at the time, but what he got into trouble for is he said he didn't vote for Trump. I believe he said that some Trump supporters, I'm not exactly sure what he said. He talked about racism as a motivator for Trump supporters. He said Trump was like another opioid. I mean, he was, he said some very clear, strong anti-Trump things. Right, that's exactly. In 2016, then obviously Trump won the election. And then J.D. finds himself having to try to win a Republican open primary, which, look, I mean, if you're never Trump, that's one of those things that's always going to go against you.

And he was getting bombarded with ads throughout that. And so, really, this all just became a proving ground of, like, who is the most MAGA, which is kind of cringe in my opinion. It's been embarrassing to watch. It's been cringe in my opinion. Yeah. That being said, a lot of people said that it wasn't going to work for him, and it did. He actually did get the endorsement. Yeah.

So it's interesting, and he will most likely be the next senator from Ohio. Well, maybe. Yeah. Because right now, I mean, he's in third place in the polls. He's not even in second. Well, that was the pre-Trump endorsement. Pre-endorsement. Yeah.

But, I mean, some of what we've seen in these other races is that while people are still very committed to Trump, it hasn't necessarily – his endorsements haven't necessarily translated. I mean, Georgia is the primary example of this where, you know, we both really thought Kemp was probably done when Trump comes in and backs Perdue. And there's no one he has been more aggressively, you know, opposed to in the Republican side than Brian Kemp. And yet the polls still continue to give him like, you know, close to, if not a double digit lead over Perdue. So it hasn't quite translated in terms of his endorsements the way that we might've expected. So we'll see. It's also very difficult to poll in these primaries. You know, the polls are a little bit all over the place. But I was just looking on Real Clear Politics. Not one of the recent polls

has J.D. in first, certainly. It's either Mandel or Gibbons. Most of them have him back in third. So I don't think that this is anywhere close to a done deal, which is why it's very risky that Trump ultimately decided to endorse J.D. here. He continues to be more or less a long shot. And we saw, you know, in Pennsylvania when he backed Dr. Oz. We'll see what the polls say about whether or not this is more anecdotal or more real. but there was kind of a freak out of even local Republican electeds, like, I don't know what he's doing with this, and sort of, there's always this way of, you know, if he does something they don't like,

it's never his fault. It's like, oh, I think his aides convinced him to do this, and I don't really understand it, but we're not going to vote for Dr. Oz, so forget about it. So we'll see if it has the impact that he ultimately wants it to do, because they're up with millions of dollars of ads of J.D. Vance saying all kinds of, you know,

nasty things about Trump. And I do think that that probably also lands with the base. It definitely lands. Look, it's not a done deal. I probably should have said that. I do think it will work only because Ohio is just such a Trump state in terms of the people there, but also in terms of the undecideds. And that's what they would always point to me. Whenever I'd be skeptical, I'd be like, yo, come on. What's going on here? In terms of my friends who know him or were much more sympathetic to his campaign and always said that he was going to win, they always pointed to the high level of undecideds. And they said that the Trump endorsement was going to move the needle. So Trump himself is scheduled to arrive in Ohio ahead of the primary.

He's going to have a rally, very likely, I assume, with J.D. Vance right next to him. That's obviously going to be a thing. And in terms of who J.D.'s up against, I mean, it's like Tim Ryan at this point, like a guy who is trying to, I don't know, he's trying to, like, be populist, but obviously... Talk about cringe.

Yeah, I mean, again, talk about cringe of a type of politician. So, look... Look, I don't think the Democrats have much of a prayer in Ohio this election. Yeah, that's right. I don't see it. I think whoever wins the Republican primary is very likely to be the next senator. Mandel could win. It's still possible. He has a lot of money behind him. Ted Cruz's people are running his campaign.

Ted Cruz also endorsed him. He's got a ton of support from the Club for Growth. And a lot of billionaires are behind him as well. Voting has already started in Ohio. Yeah, I think early voting started last month. Yeah, this is coming very late in the game. So, you know, he's going to do a rally. But again, people have already started casting their ballots

and have already kind of decided which way they're ultimately going to go. So we'll see. I have no idea. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on like Republican base in the state of Ohio, but it is an interest, very interesting test case of how much Trump's endorsement matters. Now I would implore you to take a different view of like how much his endorsement matters versus how powerful he personally still is. It's like Obama actually. It's a good example. That is a very good parallel. Obama himself, beloved by the base, all of that stuff, his endorsement didn't seem to really matter for shit for anyone. So Trump may be moving more into that terrain. But these little test

cases will be very interesting to track. We'll see. There you go. All right, guys, thanks for watching. More for you later. All right, guys, a little bit of news about how Jon Stewart's new show is actually performing. So let's see how it's being reported here. Put this up on the screen. So according to the New York Post, Jon Stewart's new show on Apple TV is reportedly a flop. They say the problem with Jon Stewart, which launched on Apple TV in September, appears to be a flop as it trails far behind its competitors on broadcast and cable TV, according to Bloomberg. Show's first episode was seen by just 180,000 U.S. homes in the first week

it debuted last fall, measurement firm Samba TV said. That number dropped to 40,000 by its fifth episode, which aired in early March. They also include a comment that I think is actually kind of revealing from Jon Stewart on the show. He said, Thank you for watching, but my guess is you didn't at the end of the premiere episode of a show. You're probably just going to look at aggregated clips of it somewhere on YouTube where you pirate Ted Lasso.

I don't even know what that is. You don't even know how to get Apple TV, do you? And I actually think that is probably the biggest issue. Oh, yeah. It's like how many people, like the platform really matters. And so how many people actually have Apple TV, know how to access Apple TV, know how to get to his episodes on Apple TV? Because, you know, when you look at his YouTube page, and I think we have a look at, you know, how his videos perform. They actually do well on YouTube. He regularly gets views,

you know, always in the 100,000s, oftentimes 500,000, always. Sometimes his stuff gets, you know, over a million views or multiple millions of views, 570,000 subs for a channel that's a year old and where YouTube isn't even its main thing. And he doesn't do daily news. Yeah, exactly. That's pretty good. Yeah. and then I also looked at his podcast rankings on Spotify. We're beating him. Of course we are. But only by a little bit. We're beating most people.

But only by a little bit. He's not far behind us in the rankings. So I think probably the biggest issue here is the platform itself versus an appetite for this content. Because I also have to say anecdotally, you know, when we had him on, when we talked about having him on, when we've covered some of the things he's done on his show, like people have really responded to that content as well. I completely agree. I think what they're doing is so bad faith saying that it's a flop. Look, I mean, first of all, Apple TV itself, let's all be honest, is kind of fake.

It's a loss leader for Apple in order to get into the content game. And they use it as a way in order to increase the value of the overall Apple bundle. These people print money. They don't care that much. It's a lot like cable news, actually. And actually, they said that his show is the number one unscripted series on Apple TV. So it's already number one. So he's doing the most that he can

given the platform that he exists on. Okay, so, you know, it's so bad faith in order to attack this. And Stuart is one of the few who actually could succeed in the open ecosystem. Yeah. 100%. Personally, I would tell him,

you don't need Apple, man. You can do exactly what we do. Well, that was kind of what I was thinking, too. Yeah, I'm like, look, I mean, not that he cares what I think, and he probably got a fat multimillion dollar check, so, you know, he's laughing all the way to the bank. But if I were giving advice, I would say, you don't need Apple, dude. You can do this all out on YouTube. A ton of people know who you are. People really

love your message, and people have been with you for many, many years, and you could do the supercast model just like we do, and I bet you would be probably making roughly the same amount of money, except now he would have 100% control bet you we'd be probably making roughly the same amount of money, except now he would have 100% control and there would be no barriers to the content. Yeah, I wonder what made him decide to do the Apple TV model. Because it may just be kind of like an older mindset. I mean, you come out of the cable world. You come out of sort of traditional broadcast and cable media.

It can be hard to wrap your head around exactly what this would look like. You expect a certain budget and a certain production level on the show. If he did it independent, you know, it wouldn't necessarily look quite the same. But there's no doubt what he would put out. Honestly, you know, a more sort of informal format, like if you've listened to the podcast, it has a little bit more of that just kind of like conversational. It's a little less highly produced. I actually think people would really respond to that from him because he's very sharp and he's very good off the cuff. was to reach the largest possible audience and have the most impact with what he was doing, yeah, I think it would have been better for him to forget about Apple and just do it on his own, put out his own podcast, have his own YouTube channel, and go in that direction.

Some stunning new reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Several colleagues of Dianne Feinstein spoke to the paper saying that they worry that she is mentally unfit to serve. Dianne Feinstein is 88 years old and her current term does not expire until 2024. Her husband actually just died, which was really tragic. He was similarly aged. But what they point to is that she is basically at the point where they have to

reintroduce themselves to her multiple times during an interaction that lasted several hours. She appears not to have a full understanding of the topics that are being presented to her. And we're talking here about four United States senators on background, including three Democrats, as well as three former staffers and a California Democratic member of Congress, all said, yeah, her mental status has just rapidly deteriorated. And this is sensitive and at this age, it can happen extraordinarily quickly. And that's nothing to denigrate her. She's lived a great and a full life, but you serve the public. Like, there's 40 million people who live in California who deserve better service and like somebody who's really fighting and working for their interests. So it's a tough situation there, Crystal. But I mean, the inside reporting

of this fits with a long pattern of the fact that, I mean, it appears that she's probably senile and all of her colleagues know it and it's probably time to talk about it and to do something. Yeah. And the people who are kind of covering this up, trying to hide it from public view, you're not doing the public any favors. And her. You're not doing her any favors. And this is, she's, she's planning on, she's filed for reelection. I mean, she's planning on not only serving on her term, but running again. Some of the details here, I mean, really, it really just is very sad, especially if you've had, you know, your parents or any loved one that you've seen go through this kind of decline. They talk, as you mentioned, about how within the course of one conversation, this person who had known her for a long time had to reintroduce themselves

multiple times. They talked about how she spoke at a memorial service for someone, again, that she had known for decades who'd been a significant political figure in the San Francisco Bay Area. And her initial comments, she didn't even mention the person. And she said Nancy Pelosi was the leader of the Senate. And it was so uncomfortable in the room that after she, you know, she just kind of got up and gave these sort of vague platitudes and shout outs to different members of the audience and then sits down. And it was so uncomfortable that she actually, her staff told her she had to get back up and talk about the person whose life they were actually there to memorialize. This, of course, comes on the heels also of, you guys might remember this report from the New Yorker, that Chuck Schumer sat down to have this difficult

conversation with her about, you know, you're not going to be able to be chair of the Judiciary Committee. And so he does this, you know, what was painful, difficult conversation with her. And then she didn't even remember that that had happened. So he had to have that conversation with her all over again. What these folks who are close to her say is that the decline has been very rapid, that even just a couple of years ago, it was very, very different. They say that she has good days and bad days. But, you know, there are enough public incidents now and enough people who are close to her, longtime colleagues who are speaking to the press to paint a pretty

clear picture. They also say she's very, very reliant on her staff for basically everything. She doesn't do any town halls. She doesn't take any, barely ever takes reporter questions, even just for basic votes. She's very dependent on the staff telling her which way to vote. She's almost never without a staffer to help make sure that she's kind of like doing what she's supposed to be doing. So, I mean, there's a few things to say about this. First of all, outside of just like the personal dimension here. First of all, there was a progressive challenger who ran against Dianne Feinstein in primary that got actually absolutely destroyed by the Democratic establishment who they completely quashed. So that's one thing to say about it.

Another thing to say about it is, and this is something that our great friend Irami is always talking about, you shouldn't be able to be a politician and get away with not doing town halls and not answering public questions and not being responsive because ultimately, you know, they kind of frame this article of like, this is why we should have term limits. No, no, this is why the public should actually be able to see who their representatives are and have to face questioning and face the public. Because I guarantee you, if Californians, you know, were able to see fully what the capacity here was at this point, they would be looking to go in another direction. And in fact, our approval rating is falling precipitously in the state as more and more of these reports ultimately trickle out.

So to me, that's what this really argues for is if you're Nancy Pelosi and Shahid Batar is running against you, if you're Jim Clyburn and you've got a candidate running against whoever you are, you should have to do public debates and actually respond to voters and to reporters and to the public. And the fact that, you know, that's just not the case. You can say, nope, I'm not doing any of that. I'm just going to be completely sheltered by my staff. It really does fail our democracy and make voters unable to make educated choices about who they want to represent them. Yeah. I think Irony's point is actually really well said. The fact that there was a challenger and it was quashed is ridiculous. And look, people in California need to wake up, especially the California Democratic Party. She's

88 years old, and I have nothing but sympathy for her, her personal life, and all that. But when it coincides with the public and their ability to have representation, the nation's most populous state, that really begins to bother me. Yeah, and Pelosi was happy to go on the record here and basically lie. Oh, she's just as fierce as ever, et cetera, et cetera. Come on, we know that's not true at this point. All right, got it. All right, guys, thanks for watching.

One more for you later. Some very revealing comments were just leaked from Congressman Mo Brooks, who's right now running for Senate in Alabama, where he actually explains in detail one of the mechanisms for corruption that involves basically lobbyists buying committee chairmanships. This goes into a level of detail that even I didn't know this was exactly how it works. Yeah, so it's quite interesting. Take a listen to what he has to say. I'm sure that y'all are very much concerned about why our Congress is so unresponsive to the regular needs of American citizens. Why some of these policies that come out are so bizarre, so unfair, so skewered against regular Jane and Joe citizens. The reason is simple.

Special interest groups run Washington. And I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean literally. Now, here is how it happens. In the House of Representatives, I'll use that as an example because that's where I work. If you want to be chairman of a major committee, you have to purchase it. And the purchase price for a major committee, say like Ways and Means, minimum bid is a million dollars. I'm talking literally here. I'm not talking metaphorically.

We have committees broken down by A group, B group, and C group. C are the cheapest. B are the most expensive, are middling. A is the most expensive. It's the most expensive because those are the committees that the special interest groups care the most about. So where does a congressman come up with a million dollars to be chairman of one of these eight committees? You can't get it from Joe and Jane Citizen, because Joe and Jane Citizen back home, they're not going to be contributing that kind of money.

They don't have it. They need that money for their own families, okay? So let me finish. Let me finish. And so you have to get it from the special interest groups. And with the special interest groups, there is a quid pro quo. If you don't do what they tell you to do, they won't give you the money that finances your chairmanship. I had one guy who ran for chairman of the NRCC, which is where the Republicans pay their money for these committee assignments and chairmanships, just as the Democrats pay theirs to the DCCC. And this guy who wanted to be chair of the NRCC actually had a brochure. And that brochure had price listings written on it. And his argument for getting elected was, elect me, I will charge you less. Now, you understand how the public policy debate is corrupted.

We need to be in a position of power. You have to do what the special interest groups require, which undermines the public policy debate. The money now is triumph. And I'll give you a second example so it's not Mo Brooks talking but there's real evidence to back this up. Congressman Thomas Massie who by the way endorsed me yesterday, yesterday afternoon. I should add that Rand Paul has also endorsed me from Kentucky. He had a lobbyist come up to him, and the lobbyist said, look, I will pay your $500,000 to be on Ways and Means if you will sponsor this patent bill. Thomas is brilliant.

He has patents, MIT grad, and Thomas said, okay, I'll look at it. And he looked at it and said, no, this hurts the small and better. The people with the power and the money are going to use that power and money to steal the patent rights from the person who actually had the idea, who should be reaping the rewards of that idea. And so Thomas went back to the lobby and said, nope, I'm not going to do it. The lobby said, okay, I'm not going to pay that $500,000. Thomas Massey got that published on the front page of USA Today, that story. And I saw it, and I'm going, finally, somebody else in the House of Representatives who is honorable, who is ethical, and sees the corruption associated with this process. And I went to Thomas and said, thank you for doing that. And Thomas responded, well, I made one big mistake.

Looked good to me. Said, well, I talked about it in terms of buying committee assignments when really it's a ritual agreement. You have to pay it every two years. Now, the national media knows about this. Both political parties do it. So neither party rises to the occasion and makes this a major public policy issue. That would increase exposure about what's getting done.

But if you want to know why our government is not properly facing the challenges that are in front of the United States of America, that more than anything else is the reason. Wow, a million dollars. Kind of amazing. Yeah. I mean, of course, there's a lot to say about this. First of all, I have no doubt that this is how this actually works. And so it shows you it's not just like some of the things that we track in terms of the stock ban, in terms of like the campaign funds for actually running for election. But this is very, very close to just a direct quid pro quo of we will fund your committee chairmanship and you're going to be in charge of this committee that we have a lot of interest in. And we assume you're going to do right by us ultimately. And see, this is the other thing,

which is that the way that so there's two there's a two pronged problem here, which is that the alternative to this previously was the seniority system, which is obviously awful. You don't just want a bunch of geriatric old people luck into committee chairmanships because they happen to have been there for 40 years. That's how it was in the 1960s. The Democrats actually still abide by the seniority system for ranking members whenever it comes to their committee chairmanships, which causes problems, as we can see. The Republicans, however, have rotating committee chairmanships. That's a good thing if it's merit-based. Instead, what it is is it's controlled by the central committee and by the GOP leader in terms of who gets a committeeship and who doesn't. Now, in that,

what he's referring to there is the $1 million is that you have to have raised a significant amount of money, not just for yourself, but for the national party and for the committee to reelect. And by doing that, the political is then party and for the committee to reelect. And by doing that, the political is then tied to your direct ability to have a chairman. Now, when you're chairman, why does that matter? The chairman decides which legislation gets to move in and out of committee, which gets to get debated, which gets to allow half petitions. He gets to schedule hearings. All of that Has an immense amount of power over legislation. Also, don't forget, the House, the People's House, as written in the Constitution, is where all taxation legislation has to originate in terms of financing, appropriations, and all of that. Not the Senate.

The Senate has to advise on this, but they don't have the same level of impact. So then the chairmanship matters even more in terms of house ways and means, house appropriations. Those are the people, coincidentally, who get the most amount of donations and have the ability in order to have a significant amount of influence and get invited all around town into the most fanciest dinners because they have such an immense amount of power. So that's like a short history of how the system came to be, but it's a perfect example of institutional corruption. And I know this stuff sounds boring, but I mean, how the committee ships get doled out, it impacts you in a way that you don't even probably know. Well, and then of course the other piece of this is like, I mean, obviously this dude is hardly a paragon of virtue. Like you look at him and I just pulled up his open secrets. He gets tons of money

from like real estate interests and developers and also a bunch of sort of like military industrial or like space tech type of companies. So he's he's playing the game himself. He's exposing the game here in this regard, but he is no in no way are his hands clean. And it's interesting because as he goes on, the clip goes about five minutes. The whole thing is worth watching. You can take a look. I think I tweeted. I think Ryan Grim tweeted and others. But he goes on to tell this anecdote about Jamie Comer or not. Sorry, Thomas Massey, different Kentucky congressman, Thomas Massey, who's kind of a libertarian. So he's credible in terms of when it comes to corruption and how he'd written this op-ed for USA Today exposing how all of this worked and how one lobbyist had offered to basically buy him this committee chairmanship.

And then not like just a couple weeks later, there he was after he had been decrying how terrible this was. There he was sending out invites to all the lobbyists in Washington to come to some fundraiser for him. So, you know, a lot of these people, they love, right, they love to posture, but then they're just as guilty as playing the same game as everybody else. So that's the other problem.

Nice little preview into the system there. Indeed. All right, guys, thanks for watching. More for you later. Hey, guys, Kyle Kalinske is letting us post some of the clips from his channel that we think you guys will really love in the Breaking Points community on our channel. Yep. Let's get to it. So Noam Chomsky has been doing a bunch of interviews recently. He spoke to Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs, and he also spoke to Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept. He's a busy man for being 178 years

old, if I don't say so myself. So first, what I want to do, I'm going to get to a video in a second. It's, you know, a piece of the interview he did with Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept. But before I do that, let me show you the thing he said to Nathan J. Robinson, which is leading to quite a bit of backlash online. And I would say it's, you know, bipartisan backlash to some extent. But anyway, so somebody tweeted, sage old Noam Chomsky patiently explaining to Ukrainians, few of whom I suspect he's actually spoken to about this, that they really have no choice but to surrender and concede to Russia virtually everything it demands, quote, because that's just the way the world works. Disgraceful. So this is what somebody said, a guy named Vincent Artman. So let me read the passage that he puts in the tweet here,

the passage that people are angry at him over. So Chomsky said the following, so I'm not criticizing Zelensky. He's an honorable person and has shown great courage. You can sympathize with his positions, but you can also pay attention to the reality of the world. And that's what it implies. I'll go back to what I said before. There are basically two options. One option is to pursue the policy we are now following, to quote Ambassador Freeman again, to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. And yes, we can pursue that policy with the possibility of nuclear war. Or we can face the reality that the only alternative is a diplomatic settlement, which will be ugly. It will give Putin and his narrow circle an escape hatch. It will say,

here's how you can get out without destroying Ukraine and going back to destroy the world. We know the basic framework is neutralization of Ukraine, some kind of accommodation for the Donbass region with a high level of autonomy, maybe within some federal structure in Ukraine. And recognizing that, like it or not, Crimea is not on the table. You may not like it. You may not like the fact that there's a hurricane coming tomorrow, but you can't stop it by saying, I don't like hurricanes, or I don't recognize hurricanes. That doesn't do any good. And the fact of the matter is, every rational analyst knows that Crimea is, for now, off the table. That's the alternative to the destruction of Ukraine and nuclear war. You can make heroic statements, if you'd like, about not liking hurricanes or not liking the solution, but that's not doing anyone any good. Okay, so I should note here that when he says Crimea is off the table,

he's clearly not saying Crimea is off the table, as in that will continue to be part of Ukraine. He's saying Crimea is off the table as in Russia's had control of it since 2014. And so it's going to be under Russian control either officially or in some unofficial way, but it will not leave Russian control. So a lot of criticism over this. I would say the aspect of the criticism that I understand is, you know, if Noam Chomsky is talking about the war in Iraq, I don't think Noam Chomsky would say something along the lines of, you know, Iraq needs to live in the real world and understand that

you're going to have to make some giant concessions to the marauding imperialist invader. That wouldn't be the bulk of his commentary. Now, that's because he's from the U.S. and so he feels responsible for the actions of the U.S. And so he would put the burden more on us. But I do get the criticism in the sense that, you know, large superpowers do messed up things and you can like across the board denounce it when the U.S. does it, but also you can recognize when another large powerful government is doing a messed up thing and put the burden and the onus on that country. So I don't know if I'd call it a blind spot, but I'd say it is, there is a problem with his thinking here.

Where, you know, again, if it was the U.S. doing it, he would reserve the bulk of his commentary to bashing the aggression of the U.S., but when Russia is illegally invading another country and occupying it, he doesn't, there's not much of that. I mean, to an extent, it's like, well, of course they shouldn't do it. But it's also, hey, this is sort of the reality of the world, so, you know, you're going to have to accept certain things here. And so, I do understand the criticism to some extent. However, I also think people are sort of misstating Chomsky's position because you can take this little portion out of the interview

and say this encapsulates everything about Noam Chomsky's position. But that's definitely not true because I watched that entire interview, or I watched a lot of the interview he did with Jeremy Scahill over at The Intercept. And now let me show you that video. So you get a more fully fleshed out take on what his position really is. We can take time to talk about the broader historical context, and you've been discussing this a lot in other interviews. But I want to just start by asking you, is there any aspect of the U.S., NATO, and European Union response to this invasion that you believe is just? The weapons transfers to Ukraine, the sweeping economic sanctions and attempts to entirely isolate

not only Russia and Putin, but ordinary Russians. Is there any aspect of the government response to this by the U.S., NATO, or the European Union that you agree with? I think that support for Ukraine's effort to defend itself is legitimate. If it is, of course, it has to be carefully scaled so that it actually improves their situation and doesn't escalate the conflict to lead to destruction of Ukraine and possibly beyond. Sanctions against the aggressor are appropriate, just as sanctions against Washington would have been appropriate when it invaded Iraq or Afghanistan or many other cases. Of course, that's unthinkable given U.S. power. And in fact, the few times it has been done, the one time it has been done, the U.S. simply shrugged its soldiers and escalated the conflict. That was Nicaragua,

when the U.S. was brought to the world court, condemned for unlawful use of force, ordered to pay reparations, responded by escalating the conflict. But so it's unthinkable in the case of the U.S., but it would be appropriate. However, I still think it's not quite the right question. The right question is, what is the best thing to do to save Ukraine from a grim fate, from further destruction, and that's to move towards a negotiated settlement. There are some simple facts that aren't really controversial. There are two ways for a war to end.

One way is for one side or the other to be basically destroyed. And the Russians are not going to be destroyed. So that means one way is for Ukraine to be destroyed. The other way is some negotiated settlement. If there's a third way, no one's ever figured it out. So what we should be doing is devoting all the things you mentioned, if properly shaped, but primarily moving towards possible negotiated settlement that will save Ukrainians from further disaster. So that's his full position. And when I look at him describe his full position, I think that's very reasonable. I don't see much to pick apart there. So let's go through it. He

says, support for Ukraine's effort to defend itself is legitimate. And then he adds the caveat, if it's carefully scaled and doesn't escalate. So I think what he means by that is, yeah, they have a right to defend themselves and they can and should be armed, but don't, you know, set up a no-fly zone for them and drag the U.S. into it. Don't, essentially, like, don't give them false hope and also perhaps don't arm the Azov Battalion, the neo-Nazis who are officially part of the Ukrainian National Guard.

So I think he's just saying you can give them weapons to defend themselves, but don't go too far and perhaps give certain kinds of weapons that could escalate the conflict and draw in the West and make it devolve out of control where, you know, nuclear war is on the table. So I totally agree with him on that point. And in fact, I think he's way more correct than the mainstream opinion, certainly mainstream media, where they seem to believe, give them like any and all weapons and also set up a

no-fly zone where NATO and or the US is shooting Russian planes out of the sky, which is direct military conflict between two nuclear-armed powers, which would be an absolute catastrophe and disaster. So I agree with him on that. And I got to be honest, I'm a little surprised that he's saying that he supports any weaponry going to Ukraine. But he does. He just said, I support Ukraine's effort to defend itself, and it's legitimate. You just need to make sure you carefully scale the weaponry and don't escalate it. Then he even says sanctions against the aggressor, by that he means Russia, are appropriate. He goes on to say, as it was, you know, if people wanted to sanction the U.S. after what we did in Iraq, that would have been appropriate. Now, I will add the little

asterisks here, and this is just my position, but I'm sure he would agree if somebody were to bring this up to him. I don't support any of the sanctions that hurt the Russian population. I would try to target the sanctions as much as possible to Putin, his inner circle, the military, the oligarchs. And really, as a matter of principle, I think that that's the best response. Even if it doesn't lead to quote-unquote positive outcomes, you can't just let one country invade another sovereign country and sit there and watch it. Now again, I'm consistent on that because I say the same thing when the U.S. does it. Nobody should just sit there and watch the U.S. commit war crimes

and invade sovereign countries. It's wrong when we do it, so it's wrong when Russia does it. So there should be standards and rules and laws that are upheld in the process of that. So Chomsky doesn't say here that he supports or doesn't support the sanctions against the people of Russia, but I assume he'd agree that going after the people of Russia is way too far because that's just collective punishment and they're innocent bystanders. They didn't do anything wrong, and so you shouldn't crack down on them. But look, I mean, when you look at the first comment

that I shared with you from the interview with Current Affairs, you would have no idea that this is what Chomsky believes as well. To some extent, arming Ukraine to defend themselves, and to some extent, sanction Russia, are totally legitimate. So now you see maybe the backlash was way overblown, and people were strawmanning him to some extent, in the sense that it's misleading to just show that comment of his, without giving the rest of his position.

Then he goes on to say, there's going to have to be a negotiation, and some diplomatic settlement. Effectively because the other options are what? Like, what are the other options? Endless escalation to eventual World War III? That's a potential another option. Or an endless 10-year war where, you know, Russia is just bogged down in Ukraine and you get the death toll rising nonstop. And so when you look at all the real options that are on the table,

yeah, it makes sense. We should want to have a negotiation, want to do a diplomatic settlement. And yes, the nature of diplomatic settlements, especially in situations like this, nobody's going to be happy. Nobody's going to be happy. Ukraine, of course, isn't going to be happy. You know, Ukraine, of course, isn't going to be happy. Russia is not going to be happy. And, but we need to find a way out. Like, we need to find a way out because we're really playing with fire here. And so, the other point, though, is one that is the most complicated to me. Because, what would that settlement look like? That's the question.

Well, I've reported to you guys based on a number of things I've read, uh, and a number of things that have been reported that Zelensky had put on the table, basically all of Russia's main asks. So, you know, Russia's main asks neutrality for Ukraine as in, you know, don't, don't be part of NATO and perhaps don't form other alliances with the West. That's one of the things on the table. Zelensky had a number of times conceded on that front and said, look, it is what it is. Even if I want to be part of NATO, we're not going to be part of NATO because there's a roadblock within NATO. So yes, we're going to be neutral. So total concession on that. The other thing is the Donbass region, some settlement for the Donbass region, either where you have the two

independent republics actually become independent republics, or you have them become part of Russia, or a certain percentage of them becomes part of Russia. Now, he has previously put that on the table as well. And then the other thing, of course, is Crimea. And there were indications in the press that Zelensky had also put that on the table. And so on the main prongs, the one that they cannot give in on under any circumstances, you know, total disarming. That's insane. Nobody would give into that, nor should they, okay? But all the other things are on the table. So some sort of solution would look like that, but now I've since seen headlines talking about how certain things here are now off the table. So if Zelensky had put, particularly I think the Donbass region and Crimea, they were put on the table, and now I've read some headlines within the past two or three days

that they're off the table. So I don't really know now, you know, what truly is on the table and what isn't on the table. But any sort of deal is going to include most of those things or all of those things. I will say there's one response to Chomsky here which could be correct, but we just have no way of knowing, which is an argument you could make if you disagree with Chomsky is, look, you want to have some diplomatic settlement, right? And you want to enforce that and get relative stability and peace. Any reasonable person would understand that.

But what if you do that and then Russia doesn't stop? What if you do that and you can't appease Putin because he's got his mind set on further territorial expansion. And so then you have a situation where it would be fair to call everybody who is pushing most aggressively for peace Neville Chamberlain. And it's like, you guys are naive. Look at what you did. You made a deal with the devil. And then now the devil is doing what the devil does. and so that's the only critique I could see of Chomsky that is actually sound, in the sense that you are accepting all of the contours and nuances of his argument,

and you accurately represent his position, and then you respond to it. Now, this is not the critique I see coming against Chomsky. People are not making that critique, but that is a theoretical critique you could make if you disagree with him. But my position on it is, you got to take the chance. Like, you got to give peace a chance. You have to try to get some sort of settlement here. And again, it's not going to make anybody happy, but it's doable and it's the least bad of all bad options. But I will say, it's not, look, it's not my decision to make right now. The U S our negative role in this is that we don't appear to be offering an off ramp. We don't appear to be wanting a diplomatic settlement, but you could argue, you know, Putin doesn't want it either. Right. Or else he would have already made it if, if some of those things were actually on the table. But my take is you have to try. You have to try to give peace a chance because the other options are just significantly worse. And look, if we get to the point where we make a deal, we think the deal's enforced, and then within a year, you know, Putin tries to do more territorial

expansion, well, then the argument that he was unappeasable is perhaps totally legitimate and we'll have to reevaluate at the time. But where we are right now, you know, I don't think we can make that, we can come to that conclusion definitively. And so we really have no other options. So ultimately what I would say is, you know, I largely agree with Chomsky here. I largely agree with Chomsky. It is up to the Ukrainians, and here's what I think will happen, hopefully. At some point, they will make some sort of a deal, you know, and that could come relatively soon, which would be positive, because fewer people would die, or maybe the fighting drags on for years. And then after years, everybody's appetite for war subsides and they're in like a permanent

stalemate to some extent. And then you get that peace deal. So, but again, what I favor is not really as relevant as what the people on the ground in Ukraine favor. And so you just sort of have to let the peace process run its course and see where it leads. I could understand why people would say, hey, you know, Chomsky, you know, who are you to make this choice if Ukraine wants to, if they want to fight to the last Ukrainian, that's their prerogative. But I think he's coming at this from the perspective, he wants to see less death and less destruction. And I understand that. So yes, that first comment, there are some criticisms that I think are fair. But when he fleshes out his entire position, I really don't

see much wrong with his position at all. Because he says he has, he supports Ukraine's effort to defend itself and arming them to some extent is legitimate, but it has to be, you know, proportionate or proportional, whatever the word is. Sanctions against the aggressor Russia are appropriate, as it was against the U.S. when we did Iraq, although I would say don't go too far where you hurt civilians. And again, he wants a negotiated settlement because what are our other options? Drag the war out for years and years and years or escalate towards World War III, those are unthinkable. So, again, the weird part of it is, Zelensky,

previously, there was reporting he did put the Donbass region on the table for some sort of a deal. He did put Crimea on the table for some sort of a deal, and he's already conceded on neutralization. The only thing he's not backing off of is you must disarm, which he's right to not back off of that. That was the previous reporting.

Now, the new reporting is those things are actually off the table, or certain of those are off the table. So I don't know where we're at in the peace process. And I know that the U.S. is really not interested too much in peace because we're not providing an off-ramp for Putin. And arguably, Putin's not at all interested in peace right now either because if he wants it, he could just withdraw. But he's not doing that because he still has you know some long-term goals here he's there is reporting he's backed off of keeve

in particular i mean yes they got bogged down there they they couldn't capture like they wanted to capture it so now they're settling for less namely probably something involving donbass and crimea but um anyway there you have it. Those were Chomsky's comments. There was a big backlash and a dogpile. But when you listen to his full fleshed out position, while I have little disagreements with it here and there, I think it's largely reasonable. this is an iHeart podcast